WordPress

You absolutely should be using SSL for your website. Security experts like Troy Hunt are adamant about this. Once you have an SSL certificate installed, you need to make sure that your site uses it.

If you use a content management system like WordPress you might be able to install a plugin like Really Simple SSL. But if that doesn’t work you may need to set up a redirect using the .htaccess file, depending on a webhost’s configuration one of two snippets should work.

TL;DR: When I was troubleshooting a WooCommerce site with a variable product an empty price field lead to the product displaying as “out of stock”.

Today I encountered an error when on a WooCommerce site; a product that was in-stock displayed as out of stock when I viewed it. WooCommerce allows you to create variable products. Variable products are products that are mostly the same but have small variations, for example, colour or size.

After adding variations to the product, on the product page it displayed a notice saying that “This product is out of stock and is unavailable”. After that, I went and checked all of the individual variants stock status and all of them did have “in stock” selected as a stock option. I then went to the “All products” page and checked the stock level there. Once again, the products displayed as “in stock”.

Feeling frustrated I tried changing the stock status to “out of stock” and back to “in stock”. Still no change 🙁

With the release of WordPress 5.0 around the corner, I wondered whether I had found a bug. I had another look at my products page and saw that the price field was blank. I added the price for all of the variants, and this resolved the error.

WordCamp Joburg is happening in 15 days and I am super excited about it. WordCamps are the locally organised, global conferences about WordPress.

I am a huge advocate for WordPress because the WordPress Content Management System is definitely more than “just a blog”, it powers a huge number of websites (at the time of writing it was around 31% of the sites that are on the Internet)*. It’s used by some tech giants like Microsoft and other Fortune 500 companies but is easy enough for a hobbyist. One of the things that makes WordPress so powerful is its community, and this community is pretty welcoming. The South African WordPress Community in particular has been a wonderful place for me. WordCamp Johannesburg is happening the week before WordCamp Cape Town which means that I will be getting to attend two WordCamps in 10 days, which I am really stoked about.

Why attend WordCamp?

Tickets are only R250 for the two day event and include meals and drinks. I am a fan of WordCamp for a number of reasons:

the welcoming environment

learning new things

getting some extra inspiration

finding different approaches

delicious food

fun after parties

but, the best thing about WordCamp for me, is the people. People happily and generously share their knowledge without agendas and selling.

What can you expect from WordCamp?

Because WordCamps are locally organised conferences about all things WordPress they aim to be welcoming to everyone. (I have only attended South African WordCamps so far – looking at adding some international ones in the future). As I mentioned this year South Africa has two WordCamps – Cape Town and Johannesburg. Both of our WordCamps follow a similar approach in being two day conferences. The first day is filled with practical workshops and in Joburg is going to have two streams – one aimed at people who use WordPress for things and the other aimed at people who make WordPress for things (Thanks to Seagyn for putting that into words. ) Day two brings everyone together in a conference style event with 30 minute talks on a range of WordPress related topics.

Let me know if I will be seeing you at WordCamp (Joburg or Cape Town) in the comments.